Whispers in the dark

Many YA books tackle the topic of teens with eating disorders and body image issues. Some, like Skinny by Donna Cooner, include insistent internal voices that whisper damaging thoughts to their hosts. Others, like Nothing by Robin Friedman and Purge by Sarah Darer Littman, portray teen boys struggling with anorexia and bulimia. But none combine these elements in quite the same way as Lois...

To survive a killer, a boy must learn to accept himself

“Even to the strangers, I am strange,” remarks 13-year-old Habo, short for Dhahabo, which means “golden” in his home country of Tanzania. The teen never feels the warmth suggested by his special name, given to him for his light appearance due to albinism, but is instead an outcast in his world. With a father who abandoned the family after Habo’s birth, a mother who...

As India divides, three lives intertwine

Jennifer Bradbury’s ambitious new novel takes place in 1947 in the Indian city of Jalandhar, near the modern border with Pakistan, just before India is divided into two separate religious states. While the time and place may be unfamiliar to many teen readers, the dramatic, intertwining stories of the three young people at the heart of this story are sure to draw them in.Tariq, a Muslim,...

Secrets buried by lifetimes

Half Lives is a smart adventure story, but it’s also perilously full of potential spoilers, so let’s step lightly, shall we? At 17, Icie’s biggest problem in life is that her boyfriend just broke up with her via text message. When she gets a 911 text from her folks, she knows it’s serious—one is highly placed in the federal government and the other is a nuclear...